Process Tooling Designed by Heat Treaters
Generic fixtures fail fast in heat treatment. Distortion, salt corrosion, thermal fatigue, and handling damage all trace back to tooling that was never designed for the process it runs in. Industrial5 has designed and delivered more than a hundred fixtures, baskets, and tooling solutions for salt bath, vacuum, and atmosphere operations — work informed by decades on the production floor, not just at the CAD station.
Engineering Design & Project Management
Tooling is one output of a broader engineering design practice. Industrial5 has delivered more than 200 design projects — equipment and process design, structural and mechanical detailing, and complete project management from concept through drawings, fabrication coordination, installation, and commissioning. Whether the deliverable is a single fixture print or a complete furnace and handling system, the same discipline applies: designs grounded in how the equipment will actually be run, maintained, and loaded.
Custom Fixture and Basket Design
We design multi-level salt bath fixtures, vacuum furnace baskets, strap and plate fixtures, and part-specific tooling matched to your alloys, geometries, and cycle profiles. Designs account for thermal growth, load paths during quench, drainage and salt drag-out, and operator handling — and we coordinate fabrication with qualified shops through delivery and first-load validation.
Automated Parts Handling Solutions
Where volumes justify it, we engineer automated parts handling for loading, transfer, and unloading operations — reducing operator exposure around hot equipment, improving cycle consistency, and removing the bottleneck between furnace capacity and manual handling. Solutions range from racking and transfer aids through fully automated handling cells, integrated with your existing controls.
Legacy Tooling Redrawing and Modernization
Many plants run critical fixtures from decades-old prints — or no prints at all. We reverse-engineer and redraw legacy tooling into modern CAD, correcting accumulated field modifications and weld repairs, so your next fixture is buildable, repeatable, and improved. Recent projects include redrawing multi-level salt fixtures and creating updated prints for long-serving production tooling.
Process and Tooling Integration
Fixturing is a process decision, not just a hardware purchase. We participate in tooling and process design reviews alongside your metallurgical and operations teams, ensuring fixtures support distortion control, load density targets, and certification requirements from the first run.
From the Drawing Board
A sample of recent fixture and tooling designs from our engineering office — every one built for a specific part, process, and furnace.
